Hello, fellow Sneakians! This week on Sneaky Dragon: Okay, everybody, you’ve all known Dave for a little while, but once you get to know him you’ll soon realize that that thing he was arguing about so passionately last week. Well, you’ll soon find him saying the exact opposite with equal conviction the next. It’s pretty annoying. That being said, remember a couple of weeks ago when he was naysaying web series? Well, he’s changed his mind now! That’s right. Dave spends a good deal of the episode praising the web series, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. What a hypocrite! Also, Ian is fed up with the new season of Doctor Who; Dave doesn’t know what you mean; Ian explains the old Canadian anthem; Dave is all for slander and libel; and Sneaky Dragon is a duck.

Dave is serious. He loves  The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Click here to watch it. But be careful. It’s addictive!

And don’t miss Dave and Ian at VanCAF on Saturday, May 25th and 26th. They will be sharing a table for both days and recording a special live Sneaky Dragon on Sunday at 3:00. It’s gonna be fun. If you’re in the Vancouver area, drop by the Roundhouse in Yaletown to see the show. It’s absolutely free!

You all know Ian and David are going to be at VanCAF on May 25 and 26, right? We’ve only been talking about it for, like, the last seven months!

You also know that Ian and David are doing a live recording of Sneaky Dragon too, right? With Colin Upton, well-known mini-comics arteest?

This is probably the first time Ian and David have tabled together since the heady days of the mini-comics BOOM of the early-90s. You will find them thumb-wrestling and eating bags of greasy chips to get all over your valuable collectables at Table F10. Here’s a handy map:

Sneaky Dragon will be recording at 3:00 on Sunday, May 26. Make sure you read Ian’s hilarious write-up on the events schedule. It’s still cracking me up.

See you there!

76 trombones led the big episode! That’s right! I’m taking it wa-a-a-a-ay back with the references. (Get over it.)

This week Ian and David talk about “famous” Canadian magician/political figure Doug Henning and not-so-famous non-magician Doug Henson; Ian and David obsess over boob cover magazine like the inappropriate Easy Rider and the incoherent Heavy Metal; Ian suggests that astronaut Chris Hadfield has found a royalty loophole; David thinks it’s a space oddity; Ian may have done 18 issues of his comic I to Dave’s one Rounder, but he brings up Dave’s history of mid-Eighties fanzine creation and Dave waxes rhapsodic on the good ol’ days of hard-to-do-it-yourself; Ian thinks it would be a good idea if Zach Snyder let himself go and made a movie his own; David says, “Sucker Punch”; Ian meets some famous people at the Ottawa Comiccon and people like him, they really, really like him; also, Dave learns that Ian doesn’t logroll – will never, ever logroll.

Another reminder! (Yawn…) David and Ian will be at VanCAF on Sunday, May 26th at 3:00 PM doing their thing…LIVE! Yes, they’ll be onstage yukking it up with special guest, longtime, mini-comics bigwig, Colin Upton. Admission is free so there is no excuse not to come down. (Unless you live in another city. That’s a good excuse.)

Thanks for listening!

Just Ian and David at Sneaky Dragon headquarters this week, but they have lots to talk about as Ian heads off to Ottawa for the Ottawa Comiccon (sic). First David celebrates the fact that it’s Episode 75, which is interesting because it is divisible by five; he is also pretty mad at a radio commercial – he and Ian perform a forensic analysis to no good end; Ian reveals the greatest Jack Benny impersonation every done on any podcast; also, who is Jack Benny? (I just wrote that to sound younger than I am); Ian is shocked (and possibly gratified) by what cvan be shown on television these days and wonders what’s next; this leads them to a discussion of Hannibal, Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon, which leads to David’s favourite conversational hobby horse: authors who fall in live with their characters; he spends some time ranting about that; David also reveals that he is a social moron, but Ian thinks it’s probably a good thing.

If you live in Ottawa, and listen to the show, you might want to drop by the Ottawa Comiccon and say hi to Ian.

Thanks for listening!

With Joanna Gaskell! This week Ian and David are joined by actor/writer/producer Joanna Gaskell to talk about her popular web series Standard Action and the Kickstarter campaign currently underway to fund Season 3; Joanna also performs with Ian in The Critical Hit Show so they talk about that and tell us about a very special guest they had on the show; they talk about web series and any mention of Kickstarter gets Ian on his Kickstarter hobby horse so he rides that around for a while; David is less thrilled than Ian at the idea of an unfiltered Internet deluge; Joanna falls somewhere in between, but more or less agrees with Ian; they also talk about Joanna’s other series The Starlit Citadel Reviews, which reviews boardgames; this allows for some general discussion of boardgames (so David can bring up Risk…again!); Ian wonders how Joanna became a nerd; the Eagles suck; Dungeons and Dragons and other RPGs are discussed; oh, and Dave plays dumb.

Click here to watch Season 1 of Standard Action and click here to watch Season 2. They are well worth your time. If you like the show, maybe you’ll want to support the Kickstarter campaign by going here. The more support they have, the better Season 3 will be and that’s a win for everyone. You can find Joanna’s other web series, Starlit Citadel Reviews here.

Don’t forget! David and Ian will be doing another live show on May 26th at 3:00 at Vancaf located in Yaletown at the Roundhouse Community Centre. Vancaf is  free admission so even if you aren’t all that keen about comic books, but would love to see a live recording of Sneaky Dragon, feel free to pop in and say hi. Our guest will be Colin Upton, longtime local comics artist.

With our busy week preparing for the live recording of Sneaky Dragon and getting the artwork together for new Sneaky Dragon t-shirts, I haven’t had a lot of time for reading this week. Still, that doesn’t mean I can’t tell you WHAT IS DAVE DOING?!?

READING: Anthony Trollope’s La Vendée

My Anthony Trollope reading challenge hit a bit of a snag this week when I started Trollope’s sole (I think) historical novel. The novel concerns a revolt against the Republican revolution in France in a region known as La Vendée, when Royalists with support from the peasant population rejected the anti-clericalism of the Republic and would not allow conscription of locals into the Republican Army.

I have not yet finished the book, but so far my feelings are that it doesn’t play to his strengths as a novelist; that the dialogue, striving to be “historical” perhaps, is stilted at times with a lot of “thee” and “thou-ing” and “forsooth-ing”; and it has that sense of inevitable tragedy that was equally off-putting while reading The MacDermots of Ballycloran. (Arguably, the “thees” and “thous” could stand in for the tu/vous delineation, but it is not consistently used.)

That said, it is Trollope and Trollope’s vivid and empathetic imagination applied to human lives can only be interesting. The descriptions of the various fight scenes are pretty good, but the description of one character’s experiences in battle is absolutely riveting – as if Trollope himself was a battle-worn veteran of many a war instead of a junior clerk working for the post office.

I’ll say a little bit more about this book when I finish it.

LISTENING: Stephen Malkmus and the Jinks, Real Emotional Trash

This has been a particular favourite of mine for a while now so I always like to pull it off the shelf and give it a listen. My favourite song is Elmo Delmo, but there are several stand-out tracks including Cold Son, Out of Reaches and the ten-minute Real Emotional Trash. Many of the songs stretch out instrumentally and I enjoy the sort of alt-psych on display – some really good playing. My only reservation is that the lyrical surrealism makes the songs sort of distant for the listener – as though you’re hearing a conversation in unrelated snatches.

LISTENING: Funkadelic, Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow

Early 70s funk as soul/r&b began to incorporate psychedelic rock stylings (usually) à la Jimi Hendrix. In its time it must have been a perfect stoner album to listen to on headphones in your parent’s basement. There’s a lot of wah-wah pedal and guitar distortion from the amazing Eddie Hazel, but for a band that evolved from a singing group with doo-wop stylings the vocals are very weak. The title song is great, but what is it saying? “The Kingdom of Heaven is within” is a twist of traditional Christian thinking that would have appealed to knee-jerk anti-authoritarian hippie-types, but doesn’t bear much deeper thought and is not very healthy in the long run. After that stellar beginning though, the album slowly runs out of steam until the final song, which is basically spoken word with sound effects and rather dull.

LISTENING: Inspiral Carpets, Life

On a recent episode of Sneaky Dragon, Ian asked me if there were any records in my music collection that I was embarrassed of and I answered “no” – much to his frustration! I’m not embarrassed by things I like, but the closest I would come is the music I bought in the late-eighties/early-nineties, searching for new great bands. It was a bit of a fallow period in pop music, in my opinion, and the pickings were slim, but you kept on trying! This album suffers from one of the biggest problems of the 80s/90s: producers and bands trying to figure out the new CD paradigm. The unfortunate answer was to throw out the LP format of a 40 to 45 minute set of songs programmed for two sides and replace it with bloated albums of 65 to 70 minute lengths with most of the good songs front-loaded.

The Inspiral Carpets were a Manchester band that rose to some prominence during the whole “Madchester” scene with the Happy Mondays and Stone Roses (Remember them? No?) The band’s main point of interest was the Hammond organ playing of Clint Boon – oh, and the controversy stirred up by their t-shirts of a crudely drawn cow with spiral eyes that read “Cool as fuck” – but you know what? You soon find that a little Hammond organ playing goes a long way. Oddly, I find the slower songs more appealing then the Seeds-like fast ones, which seem too rushed. It didn’t inspire me to get my baggies out of the closet and do some freaky dancing. Oh, and at sixteen songs the CD is way too long!

LISTENING: Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, Selected Shorts

This is second album from Dan Hicks stint on Surfdog Records that took him from total obscurity to semi-obscurity. His comeback album, Beatin’ The Heat, is really great. This album is a little bit spotty with some weaker material. Hicks was in The Charlatans, the band that arguably kicked off the San Francisco scene in the 60s. He then formed the Hot Licks in the late 60s and they had some renown in the early 70s before sinking out of sight. If the combination of Stephane Grappelli/Django Reinhardt playing combined with the Andrew Sisters and louche, drawling vocals singing humorous songs sounds attractive then Dan Hicks is the man for you! Special guests include Willie Nelson and Jimmy Buffet, which seems right in Hicks generational wheelhouse, but also Gibby Haynes from Butthole Surfers, which is not so easily explicable (since Haynes isn’t much of a singer, his contribution is more of a dialogue – literally phoned in).

READING: Peyo, La Soupe aux Schtroumpf

My daughter “Phyllis” brought this bande dessinée back from France for me when she went on a school trip to Europe. Of course, “Schtroumpfs” is the original Belgian name for Smurfs (and never seems quite as good a name as Smurf, quite frankly, but then I suppose it’s what we’re used to). La Soupe aux Schtroumpfs (or Smurf Soup) is the main story and is about a giant with an enormous appetite sent by Gargamel to find the village of the Schtroumps where he can have some delicious Schtroumpf soup. I believe this is the only story that has an outsider find the village and even Gargamel stumbles upon it, but Papa Schtroumpf soon fixes their little red wagons. The second story concerns Schtroumpfette – who was created by Gargamel to destroy the Sctroumpfs, but somehow didn’t quite, but is too disruptive to live with them – up to more coquetry and tormenting the poor love-stricken Schtroumps with her unreasonable femaleness. (Hey, I don’t write ‘em; I just read ‘em, folks.) The Schtroumps are more for children then Johan et Pirlouit and Benoit Brisefer, but I could stare at the beautiful artwork for hours – all those cute mushroom houses and the gorgeous ink lines. *gush!*

With Pia Guerra! Ian and Dave went to Vancouver Fan Expo for their first ever live recording of Sneaky Dragon. They were joined by artist Pia Guerra who is the co-creator of the comic and popular internet movie rumour, Y: The Last Man. The show is a bit shorter than usual due to a technical glitch – also know as an ID10T error (or Dave is dumb); the exact nature of which will become obvious in the first few seconds of the show. Besides the sparkling wit and bonhomie of the missing five minutes of the podcast, Ian, Dave and Pia discussed cosplay, child-rearing and the cast list of Xena: Warrior Princess. Also, Dave attacks to audience; Ian attacks Dave; should parents ban Pokemon; at what age should children watch Buffy the vampire Slayer and the Evil Dead movies (you may disagree with Dave’s answer); Dave comes down hard on Toys and Heaven’s Gate (finally!) (but somebody had to do it!); Ian wishes he wouldn’t; Pia doesn’t like Disney; and Dave’s daughters Myllis and Phyllis make something of an appearance.

Thanks to everyone who came out to see us! You were great! Don’t forget that Ian and Dave will be making an appearance at VANCAF on May 26 at 3:00. Admission is free for this show so you have absolutely no excuse for not coming! (Unless, you know, you have other things to do.)

This week’s title card was suggested by Phyllis! (Thanks, dear.)

It’s Sneaky Dragon time! It’s Sneaky Dragon time! Huzzah1 Huzzah! Welcome back, fellow fans of sneakiness. Ian and Dave are getting ready for their live podcast at the Vancouver Fan Expo, but that doesn’t mean that this episode gets short shrift – quite the opposite, in fact (they plan to coast and take it easy for the live show). This week: spiders somehow come up again creeps out Ian; Dave discusses a serious car accident he had on the weekend (and he is thankful that neither he nor his daughter “Phyllis” were hurt, believe me); he tells a couple of stories of other car accidents so Ian can make jokes at his expense; Dave has a shout out for a listener; Ian has a shout out theme; it’s Superman’s 75th anniversary; Ian and Dave feel sorry for the rich; oops…there’s someone at the door!

If you’re in the Vancouver area – also known as the Lower Mainland – you can come see Ian and Dave with their guest Pia Guerra recording a live Sneaky Dragon podcast. That’s Sunday, April 21st at 11:00 am. Come on down! It will shatter all your illusions!

If you’re in the Vancouver area this weekend, don’t miss your chance to see Ian and Dave live at Vancouver Fan Expo. They will be doing a live taping of Sneaky Dragon with special guest and returning champion Pia Guerra, penciller and co-creator of Y:The Last Man. The live taping will be at 11:00 am on Sunday, April 21st. Come by after church!

Ian has a table as well so feel free to drop by and say hi! You will find him at table P11, where he has free Sneaky Dragon mini-mini-comics (or tini-comics) to give out and Sneaky Dragon t-shirts for sale!

Welcome back, my Sneaky friends, to the review column that never ends. Uh…because I’m always doing stuff and reading stuff and, you know, like that.

Anyway, after that verbal dexterity, let’s see WHAT DAVE IS DOING?!?

READING: Anthony Trollope’s The Kellys and the O’Kellys

Yes, my Trollope marathon continues with his second published book and the second book drawn from his experiences while working as a postal surveyor’s clerk in rural Ireland. Unlike the first book, which I have described as “Irish Gothic”, this book is more humorous with a lighter touch and less editorializing about conditions in Ireland – rather, incorporating those observations into the story itself.

This is one of the few Trollope novels I’ve never read so I simultaneously read it on my e-reader and read the paperback as well. (I don’t want to have a book on my shelves I’ve never read.) The book was quite helpful actually. The appendix describes in great detail the historical events occurring while the novel takes place. Ireland was going through a lot of turmoil at that time as the Irish began to chafe under British rule and activists, called “Repealers”, demanded Irish autonomy from England. However, this turbulent background doesn’t have much to do with the actual story. Trollope uses it to establish a time and a place: Ireland pre-Potato Famine.

The book has a fantastic villain – an absolutely base rogue – and another character, who, while not necessarily a villain, is a great cad. They are paired off against a couple of decent, though flawed, fellows: an Irish lord and his friend, a well-to-do tenant farmer. Trollope, who loved to hunt, provides us with a description of an Irish hunt that is exciting and full of picturesque description. I love when Trollope writes about fox hunts and, because he was an enthusiastic hunter, there are a number of them in his books. (I’m particularly looking forward to re-reading the hunt scene in Can You Forgive Her? – although that book is still twelve novels away.) Actually, horses have played a large part in the novel thus far with a few of the characters closely involved in horseracing (or “the turf”). His description of taking the Ballinasloe canal-boat is priceless too – a twenty-hour ride of tedium that because of the condition of the boat cannot be relieved by “reading, sleeping, or thinking”. It’s almost as great as his hilarious description of the sea voyage at the beginning of  North America.

Like all good Victorian novels, The Kellys and the O’Kellys is full of romantic entanglements that in the Victorian era were difficult to untangle. Unlike now, Fanny Wyndham can’t just text her jilted lover Lord Ballandine and say “lets hook up ” – such things weren’t done! A lady had to think of her honour!

This was Trollope’s first great novel. Too bad it was completely ignored when it was originally published. In fact, it lost money!

READING: Lee Child’s Killing Floor

This is a favourite series of books for my wife. She has read them all and some of them a couple of times. Like all good Reacher fans, she eagerly awaited the Tom Cruise movie so she could hate it.

This is the second one I’ve read because I didn’t think the first one I read was that great, but I wanted to give the series a chance. It’s always fun to find some light reading that’s a pleasure to plow through. I remember my wife and I tearing through a bunch of Dick Francis novels years back and those were fun – horses! – and could always be found in thrift shops while you were travelling.

I have to say I’m not a huge fan of these books though. Reacher, in case you didn’t know, is a huge, ex-military policeman who travels around America and through a bizarre streak of bad luck always ends up unwillingly helping people in life-threatening situations. This gives him plenty of opportunity to maul, beat and murder people in a gory fashion and have sex with beautiful women. Oh, and be ponderous. (As the Flintstones bird says, “It’s a livin’.”) To me, the Reacher character is a big, boring lout and, because he’s the narrator, the story is told in a dull style with no wit to enliven the stolid, unconvincing action.

To be fair, I believe the first book I read, Bad Luck and Trouble, was not a first-person narrative; on the other hand, it was still boring.

The best part of this book is when Reacher, who has been accused of murder, is sent with another character to prison. Just so we know how dangerous it is, Reacher tells us about a soft, young man in the army who was sent to prison where he died after repeated anal sex; not only repeated anal sex but also “with a pint of semen in his stomach”. Is that supposed to be scary? Scary, rather than just off-putting and weird because it’s really dumb. What bored coroner extracted the semen from his stomach to measure it? Did he die from the anal sex or the semen? As my wife pointed out, maybe he would have been less popular if he hadn’t swallowed.

(Please note: this is where I got the information I mentioned in Episode 71 about how much paper money is in circulation in America so take it as you please.)

LISTENING: Field Music, Tones of Town

This made my list of “perfect” albums that we discussed in Episode 70 so of course I like this CD. It’s sort of a combination of the retro post-punk sounds of the early-noughties and British art rock with a healthy dose of, believe it or not, progressive rock sounds (notably Yes and Supertramp). Well, that sounds pretty awful, Dave, I hear you saying, but you would be wrong to think that. Wrong, wrong, wrong. This album is actually a perfect little jewel and the last one by the original line up of the multi-instrumentalist brothers, David and Peter Brewlis, with keyboard player Andrew Moore.

I was familiar with the song “Tones of Town” from a MOJO magazine sampler CD so I picked this up on our travels through Great Britain last summer at the HMV in Liverpool and it soundtracked a good part of our trip.

LISTENING: Paul McCartney, RAM

Maybe not a great record in the strictest sense of the word, but a greatly listenable record with some good songs including one of my favourite McCartney songs “Too Many People” – the song that got John Lennon all mad and spurred him to write his ill-natured riposte “How Do You Sleep?” Lennon apparently took umbrage at the lines “Too many people going underground/Too many reaching for a piece of cake/Too many people pulled and pushed around/Too many waiting for that lucky break/That was your first mistake/You took your lucky break and broke it in two”; feeling that the line “Too many people going underground” was directed at him and Yoko and that Paul was suggesting that he, by precipitating the breakup of the Beatles, had “broken” his lucky break.

By the way, Paul was writing about the Lennons in this song! This was Paul’s break up album and if it’s not as in your face as Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band, you can read a lot between the lines. And if you don’t feel like reading between the lines, you can look at the picture of two beetles fucking on the album cover.

I also love the multi-part Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey, which is just pure silliness and was greatly attractive to me as a child.

The version of RAM that I’m listening to also has a disc of McCartney’s strange conceptual art piece Thrillington. When the record originally came out, it was not credited to McCartney, but to a character named Percy “Thrills” Thrillington. (In fact, no one knew McCartney had anything to do with it until 1989!) At the time of its release, McCartney took out ads and placed mentions in the papers about the socialite Percy “Thrills” Thrillington, making him seem like a real person.

The album itself is an instrumental version of RAM, recorded about the same time as the original album, but shelved when WINGS was formed. It’s actually really good with some great British sessions musicians like Herbie Flowers and Clem Cattini and arrangements by Richard Hewson. Some of the songs take on a Brian Wilson-arranged Beach Boys feel, which I really like. Worth a listen at least once, anyway. Terrible cover, though.

READING: Uncut Magazine’s The Beatles: The Uncut Ultimate Music Guide

As a Beatles nut, this is pretty great. A collection of contemporary articles about the Beatles taken from Melody Maker and New Musical Express with new assessments of their complete discography including the collections and live albums. You can agree or disagree with those and that’s part of the fun. It’s great reading the history of the band through the rosy spectacles of the early music writers. It starts with small mentions in the papers of an up-and-coming beat combo; takes you through the years of Beatlemania (with the music writers “embedded” in the tour entourage); the stories and interviews get more intermittent through the “serious” phase of the band, but there are pieces all the way up to the sad and bitter break up. It’s interesting to read the descriptions of the tours and know the writers are glossing over a lot of “bad behaviour” – leaving out the girls and the drinking and the drugs. The Beatles themselves are fascinating in how much they say, how personable they are, but how little they actually reveal about themselves and the band. Saddest of all is the optimism of their enduring friendship when we know the inevitable ending to a wonderful story.

See you next time!

Hi Sneaky Friends! Welcome to Episode 71 of Sneaky Dragon. This week: Dave’s got nothin’; Ian’s got something against cartoon relatives; Dave reveals the seamy underside of hockey; Ian thinks he knows what jai alai is; Aztec basketball is mentioned, as are severed heads and bowls full of spiders; Ian is continuing his sugar fast – only now it’s an amended sugar fast (Ian is playing fast and loose with sugar fasts!); the walrus was Paul and the dragon is Dave; why Ian doesn’t drive; and Dave thinks he’s cool (just play along with the guy, people).

This week, we have a new contest: give us three good names for a spider related cereal and win a prize! (Ian and Dave couldn’t do it. Dave had nothin’ this show and Ian was suffering from sugar withdrawal.)

If you are in the Vancouver area on Sunday, April 21st, come see Ian and Dave at a live taping of Sneaky Dragon at Vancouver FanExpo. Their guest will be Pia Guerra, artist and co-creator of Y: The Last Man.

And, as always, thanks for listening!

With Jason Dedrick. This week on Sneaky Dragon, David’s cousin Jason returns and it’s a long one! (As the showgirl said to the bishop.) Ian, David and Jason tackle a listener’s questions and discuss board games and some of their favourite music. Ian switches places with Dave and starts a sugar fast – only he one ups Dave with an EXTREME sugar fast; no one knows Informer – no one anywhere; police stories; Dave creates some new words: “popsicle truck” and “Elvising”; speaking of Elvis, how exactly did he die?; and we get to hear a song from Jason by the immortal Sandy Allen Quartet!

Thanks for listening!

It’s never happened before in the sixty-eight previous title cards I’ve drawn, but this week for Episode 69 I had to scrap a cover and change my plans.

The destruction of the Eiffel Tower is almost as common as the destruction of Big Ben. With Ian returning from Paris, I thought it would be funny to show a picture of a Eiffel Tower destroyed by a surprised-looking Sneaky Dragon. I scoured Google images, looking for a suitable picture, but it seemed like nothing would work. I decided I would have to do it myself; found a large image of a Parisian cityscape with the Eiffel Tower and began to draw it. As I worked on this title card I realized that I wouldn’t have the time I needed to refine this rough drawing into finished pencils, inking it and then colouring it so I tried the search again, found a pretty good picture and recycling the dragon from this image I was able to create a pretty good title card.

As I mentioned during the show, Easter is a very busy time for me because I’m a dork who sings in a church choir. This year I agreed to sing the Exultet during our Easter Vigil service and that added to my time constraint. Throw in driving out to the airport to pick up our youngest daughter who was returning from a school trip to Europe and my day was jam-packed!

This image would have made an awesome title card. Too bad it will never be

.

Hi Sneaky friends!

I really like to read books and listen to music so in order to bump up the content on our website, I thought I’d keep a little journal called:

WHAT IS DAVE DOING?!?

READING: Anthony Trollope’s The Macdermots of Ballycloran

Call me crazy, but I decided to read or, in most cases, re-read all of Anthony Trollope’s novels. He was a ve-e-e-ery productive author due to the fact that he wrote 2500 words every day of his writerly life – every day. It didn’t matter if he was sick, tired, working, travelling; he wrote 2500 words every day or for three hours. Even if he finished the novel he was working on. He turned the page and finished his quota of words on his next novel. All in all, he wrote 47 novels – some of them very great; some so-so; but all of them enjoyable. He had a great gift as a storyteller of empathy or imaginative feeling and his novels are full of humour and warmth as his characters navigate our harsh world.

Anyway, so that’s what I’m doing. I predict it will take me a while – unlike my re-reading of all of Jane Austen’s novels, which took me less than a month. Most of these books are your typical Victorian doorstoppers and there are forty-seven of them! Forty-seven!

His first novel, The Macdermots of Ballycloran, was written while Trollope lived in Ireland where he worked for the Royal Mail as a postal surveyor’s clerk and published in 1847. It’s one of those novels with an inexorable march to unhappiness that would be painful to read if not for Trollope’s affectionate eye for the Ireland of that period and the Irish themselves. His description as the narrator of discovering and exploring the old house at the beginning is magical and gives the book a Gothic feeling as the harbinger of inescapable doom. His portrayal of the lives of the Irish poor is full of tenderness, but also humour. His account of an Irish race day is particularly vivid.

Still, I’m not a huge fan of books with an inevitably sad and tragic ending so my enjoyment of this book was limited in some ways, but Trollope is always hard for me to put down.

LISTENING: 10cc Tenology

I’ve been listening quite a bit to a new box set from the band 10cc who, upon listening to this box set, will make you ask yourself, “This band was popular???” I mean, I like them, but I’m a weirdo! It seems odd to me that this band once had hit records on the charts – crazy records like the doo-wop pastiche “Donna” and the multi-part “The Dean and I”. Of course, everyone knows “I’m Not in Love” and it’s understandable why it was a hit, but it’s still a strange song with the stacks and stacks of multi-tracked vocals that must have taken forever to do.

As I jokingly tweeted a little while ago, “The worst part of a band’s career is the fourth disc in a box set”. Tenology avoids it a little by having its fourth disc be a disc of rarities, but you see a real drop off between the first disc of singles – all crazy English art rock – and the second disc – a slide into bland, AOR. The third disc is a collection of album cuts including one of my faves, the 11-minute Pink Floyd pastiche “Feel the Benefit”.

I still think I need to listen to this a few more times to soak it all up and I have yet to watch the fifth disc – a collection of promo films and live television performances.

READING: Joe Ollman’s Mid-Life

This book should be charged under some sort of standards and practices code for false advertising as it was completely different and much better than I thought it would be. Outrageous!

I was expecting a jokey meditation on aging – something we all must face eventually – with a lot of one-pagers and humorous diagrams, but what Ollman gives us is much deeper. A man, whose life choices have him feeling suffocated and put upon, who is seeing the effects of age in the mirror and the old joints and sees no escape, has a public meltdown when he falls “in love” with a popular children’s performer. We also see her life too – at the crossroads as she prepares to sign a deal with the Devil – a large TV network – and give up on her dreams of being a “serious musician”. This huge decision leaves her feeling unmoored and open to someone to guide her. She and Ollman’s stand-in get to meet and the humiliation is palpable. Plus a lot of one-pagers and humorous diagrams!

I have a feeling that Ollman has taken aspects of his real life and blown them out of all proportion for our amusement and I take off my hat to him!

LISTENING: MOJO compilation CD The Roots of the Rolling Stones

As a regular purchaser of the Greatest Music Magazine on the Planet, MOJO, I also get to enjoy their CD compilations, which started intermittently but have now become a regular monthly event like not completely paying off my credit card. The price you have to pay for such regularity is the occasionally uninspired CD like this one. The music is great, of course; mostly blues: Slim Harpo, Elmore James, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, etc. My favourite songs are Gene Allison’s “You Can Make It If You Try” and Chuck Berry’s “Memphis, Tennessee”. But the roots of the Rolling Stones? Yawnzo. Nothing you haven’t heard before if you’re a fan of music at all.

Well, that’s all for this week.

Hello, Sneaky friends! Ian is back from Paris! He has lots to tell us about: weird celebrity sightings at the Louvre; scary places you can visit in Paris (Ian didn’t); and inept seating on airlines. Also discussed: the imminent end of Dave’s sugar fast; don’t feel sorry for Hamilton Burger; was Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds about LSD; Sneaky Dragon, the most disappointing podcast on the Interweb; Dave will hear no wrong about the Monkees; Dave’s onslaught of Easter services; Dave pleads ignorance of bra size minutiae; Ian shrugs off near-death experiences; an assortment of food is ranked; and INTERMISSIONS!

Thanks for listening!

Ian is leaving for Paris this week, so Ian and Dave have piggybacked two shows into one session – this is the second. I’m telling you this since they can’t keep their big mouths shut and let the chat out of the bag anyway. This week, to celebrate Ian’s trip to Paris, Dave tells about his first disastrous visit to Paris; Ian is not a fan of French waiters; Dave’s wife Lezah drops by with her weird accent to tell us about a couple of cooking disasters; Dave tells the recipe for one of his most popular family meals, Lemon Chicken (you can find the recipe below); Ian describes the most dangerous meal he ever made; Ian is disappointed by the Erotic Peasant; Dave isn’t a big fan of Delgrassi Street; and the one with the cow is Look Who’s Talking Moo.

Thanks for listening!

Dave got a couple of the ingredients wrong during the show, so here is the recipe for Lemon Chicken:

Ingredients:

4 chicken breasts
1/2 cup of butter
1/2 cup of lemon juice
1/4 cup of olive oil
4 cloves of minced garlic
2 tablespoons of minced onion (I usually just dice it as finely as I can)
1 and 1/2 teaspoons of salt
1/2 teaspoon of pepper
1/2 teaspoon of thyme (dried)

Cut the chicken breasts into chunks. Melt the butter in a large saucepan at medium heat. Add the chicken and cook until white. While the chicken is cooking, mix the remaining ingredients together in a small bowl. When the chicken is cooked, pour the lemon mixture over the chicken. Turn down the heat, cover and allow the chicken to simmer for 40 minutes.

While the chicken is simmering, make a pot of rice. (If you’re completely hopeless as a cook and don’t know how to make rice. Bring two cups of water to a boil in a pot; when the water is boiling add 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 cup of rice. Stir with a fork, cover and let simmer for 14 minutes. After fourteen minutes, remove from heat and fluff up rice with the fork; recover and let sit for five minutes. This will serve four)

When everything is ready, serve the lemon chicken over the rice. Be sure to add a bit of the sauce mixture because it’s delicious!

David crept warily into the Panther’s lair for an appearance on the Ink Panthers Podcast! this week with Mike Dawson and Alex Robinson. Discussed: living as a fake American in Canada; David assuages Mike’s fears of grown up children; crazy Scottish parades; and St. Patrick’s Day shenanigans. David also got to provide the title card!

Please listen here!

This week on Sneaky Dragon, Ian and Dave are back from Emerald City and talk about their trip down to Seattle; they steal another podcast’s show topic; Dave lists things again – this time Dick Tracy sidekicks and Seattle landmarks; nostalgia is dead! (or is it?); Ian reviews the new Oz and the old Wiz; Dave talks about an obscure noir film The Narrow Margin; he also promotes the movie channel TCM for free.

This show is for Sonny Bono!

Thanks for listening!

With David Lasky. This week Ian and David were in Seattle at the Emerald City Comic Con so cartoonist David Lasky (Boom Boom, Urban Hipster, The Carter Family: Don’t Forget This Song) stepped into Sneaky Dragon HQ (i.e., David’s hotel room) – forcing David to change his name. Ian, David and no longer David spent some time discussing their early careers in mini comics; Ian thinks he is too productive; No longer David thinks he was too unproductive; David got it just right; Ian is discomforted by crime; David tells us about James Joyce and Ulysses; No longer David is a terrible self-promoter;  David tells us how to get an agent; how to get a book deal; and how to run a super successful Kickstarter campaign; No longer David and Ian listen in awe. Also, despite a professed disinterest, they make David talk about the Carter Family.

David also has an Etsy shop, which you can check out here.

And here is David being interviewed in one of Inkstuds‘ series of video interviews.

Thanks for listening!

This month our friend – and double guest – Branwyn Bigglestone is putting away the candy jar for the month of March to raise money for At the Crossroads, an organization that does some incredibly innovative work with homeless youth.

That’s right, Branwyn can’t eat a single piece of cake, pie, cupcake, cookie, chocolate, fudge (FUDGE, PEOPLE!) or any other type of sweetie for the entire month of March! Make her supreme sacrifice worthwhile by supporting her with a donation here.

Any amount you can generously donate will go a long way towards giving  these kids the help they need.

Thanks!

With Branwyn Bigglestone. This week Ian and David welcome back the Biggletronster – Branwyn Bigglestone! We really enjoyed having Branwyn on the show (way back on Episode 18) and since she was visiting Vancouver it seemed like the perfect opportunity to have her on again! In this episode David and Ian explore Branwyn’s nerd roots; discover Branwyn hates hippies (who doesn’t?); isn’t keen on reading boring, old, dusty books; and enjoys the Vancouver Aquarium – particularly the nasty otters. Also, it turns out that no one likes Dave’s “jokes”; nerds don’t have to apologize; Ian invents the word “karmatically”; the Fantastic Four isn’t so fantastic; and they kick the Hulk when he’s down.

As mentioned on the show, Branwyn is back on her sugar fast for the month of March in support of At the Crossroads and the help they give homeless youth. You can donate to Branwyn’s campaign here. It’s for the kids!

Look for all of them – Ian, David and Branwyn – at this year’s Emerald City Comic-Con. Ian is doing The Critical Hit Show on Saturday night at seven and David and Branwyn are just kickin’ it.

Thanks for listening!

With Ben Mills! This week hilarious stand-up comic Ben Mills joins Ian and David on Sneaky Dragon. On this episode: Ben, David and Ian discuss their glorious careers in sales; Dave doesn’t believe in orphan circuses; Ben is dismayed at current trends in stand-up comedy; Ben and Ian are opposed to education; Ben and David geek out over baseball; Ben doesn’t like hockey – David is suitably outraged; Ben suspects his hosts of drugging him; and, the show never ends…

Thanks for listening!

A special love show for Sneaky Dragon this week as Ian and Dave record on Valentine’s Day and neglect their wives. Dave begins his second annual Lenten sugar fast and falls asleep near the end of the show; Ian finds it strange that Fat Albert and his gang didn’t have trouble from the Bloods and the Crips; they discuss how to bury incredibly fat people; Dave reveals his dad sings barbershop; there are a lot of Bourne movies; Ian didn’t pay attention to Lord of the Rings; and, finally, Dave fucks himself.

Thanks for listening!

With Alex Robinson! Cartoonist and podcaster Alex Robinson (Box Office Poison, Tricked, Too Cool To Be Forgotten) joins Ian and David on Sneaky Dragon this week. Of course, they talk a little bit about Alex: his experiences at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and his early mini-comics – before he gets his back up and Ian has a temper tantrum. Also discussed: Robot Supermen: World Police; the bizarre world of Bizzaro; UFOs and other uncomfortable conversations; story songs versus novelty songs; Lex Luthor: Real Estate Agent; and David reveals he and Alex to be Beatle nerdzzz. *GASP!*

Our apologies for making Alex late for his own podcast The Ink Panthers! It’s one of Sneaky Dragon’s favourite podcasts so we really appreciate Alex coming on the show.

Thanks for listening

Hola, amigos de sneakiness! This week Ian and David are alone together again…naturally! This week Ian is all about TV: he hates The Taste (needs salt); loves King of the Nerds (natch); and is mad at Celebrity Cook Off for voting off his favourite celebrity (and for being dumb). He and Dave discuss comedians who use sound effects; Dave does a terrible impression of Gilbert Godfried; Ian tells Dave why everyone is mad at Glee (it turns out they were Glealing other people’s song arrangements); Dave tells us what video games he enjoys; Ian goes to dinner parties with Hitler (as a subject of conversation, people); and Dave talks volubly about the Beatles – his favourite band!

Thanks for listening!

With Shane Nelken. This week on Sneaky Dragon, musician and great fellow, Shane Nelken dropped by to talk with David and Ian about his upcoming album which he’s currently funding through Indie-Go-Go (you can find it here). They had so much fun, they didn’t want to stop the show! There was lots to talk about this week – almost too many to list – but David once again proves he is the worst at introducing guests in the history of podcasting; Ian and Shane talk/complain/reminisce about working at the CBC where Shane does a very funny advice show; the show gets very, very Canadian (sorry); Shane describes his crowdfunding campaign; he tells Ian and Dave about meeting Sneaky Dragon theme song composers Belle and Sebastian; about playing on the David Letterman show; about several of his commercial ventures; and just how he got Morgan Freeman to do the voiceover for his Indie-Go-Go video; the mention of Morgan Freeman gives Dave the opportunity to be fantastically wrong about something…again; and Shane closes the show with a beautiful solo song.

And we prove that if you want to fund a project, don’t come on Sneaky Dragon. Just kidding! There’s NO better way to raise money! Here’s that link again: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/237843?c=home

Thanks for listening!

For fans of process posts, here’s a little one with some of the early roughs and pencils from two recent title cards that I really enjoyed drawing and think were particularly successful:

It’s kind of hard to explain how I come up with title cards for each show. After each title card is done, I always think that I’ll never be able to think of another one to draw again, but so far this melodramatic statement has not yet come true. I usually try to find something that we talk about on the show that sounds fun to draw and will make a humorous title card.

One of my favourite title cards I’ve created so far for Sneaky Dragon is from Episode 51, in which Ian and I spent a great deal of time discussing James Bond films, including the newest film in the series, Skyfall. Naturally, that seemed like a great title card image so I immediately went to good old Google Image, typed in “Skyfall” and found this image from the posters (as usual, clicking on the image will open a larger image in a separate window):

As soon as I found this picture, I wanted to make a mirror image of Ian and I shooting each other in the face in gory detail. I copied this image, pressed Control + N (New) in Photoshop, pasted it in, then printed it as large as I could on a letter-sized piece of paper. Then I took that printed image, slapped it down on my light table, and drew this image of me, using the original picture of Daniel Craig as reference:

You can see my usual method of working the drawing up using different coloured pencils to create the construction lines. I rarely draw with a lead pencil at this stage of the drawing.

Usually when I’m drawing and I start to get frustrated because things aren’t working out or if I’m feeling like I need to erase a bunch of stuff and refine the drawing, I’ll simply trace it and fix it as I go. This is refreshing because you’re tracing the good stuff and adding more good stuff. (And if you find yourself in the same bind, you can start the process over again.) Since I was drawing on a large 35.5×42.3 cm sheet of tracing paper, I folded it in half and traced this image:

As you can see, this isn’t very different, but it is a more refined version of the image above. I’ve cleaned things up around the glasses and added more detail here and there (especially the shoes, which I hadn’t even bothered with in the original rough).

Now, since I wanted to make this a mirror image of futility, I took that drawing, flipped it around and re-traced it, adding Ian’s head to the body, changing the pants and the shoes, and the bullet entry point.

You can see the construction lines for Ian’s head and some signs of erasing as I worked it out, but the rest of the drawing is basically a trace of the drawing of me. I did have some trouble working out his hands holding the gun, which were the reverse of mine, so I had to redraw them. I added them to the drawing when I did the final pencils.

Here’s the final pencils of Ian getting shot in the mouth. You can see that I’ve changed the hands holding the gun and also moved the drawing along a bit so I could get the blood spatter and skull fragments into the picture. Because of the length of the drawing, I had to tape two pieces of tracing paper together so you can see my leg and foot in this drawing…

…and Ian’s foot in this drawing. I also moved this picture along to fit the exploding skull fragments and blood spatter in. The gruesome violence was one of the most important elements in the design.

I’m quite proud of the inking I did for these drawings (and that’s not always the case). I used Speedball SuperBlack ink and a Robert Simmons #2 sable brush on Strathmore 2-ply smooth bristol. I really like the line I get with the Simmons brush – although I’ll admit it doesn’t hold much ink so you don’t get a lot of lines inked before you’re dipping the brush again. I prefer a smooth finish when I’m inking.

And here is the final image of Ian getting shot in the face. Cute, hey? After this, I scan the images into Photoshop where they are coloured and readied for the website. (If you’re interested in that process you can follow this link to an older post where I talk about that aspect of the title cards. http://www.sneakydragon.com/dave.html )

Another recent title card I thought was particularly successful and fun to do was Ian and I as Adam and Eve for Episode 58.

As usual, my Friday after recording the show was spent with me consciously and unconsciously trying to think of a good title card image. From the show’s topics, I could have done another James Bond-related one, but I’m not ready to repeat myself yet – after show 100 all bets are off. Since Ian and I spent a little time on the show discussing the Genesis story of creation, I thought that would make a fun image with Ian and I standing in for Adam and Eve and the dragon playing the role of the Serpent.

So, I merrily skipped along to my nearest Google Image and typed in “Adam and Eve”. Most of what turned up wasn’t very suitable. For whatever reason, it seems like the Garden of Eden hasn’t been very inspiring for painters these last few hundred years – most of the images were awkwardly posed or crowded and unappealing. Then I found this picture:

It was perfect! Adam’s pose was a little drippy, but Eve’s was fine and I loved the way the Serpent was winding down the tree. (I don’t know what happened to the arms and legs he lost when he was cursed by God, but…eh, whatever.) I copied the image, opened it in Photoshop and printed out an enlarged picture I could use as reference.

I taped it to the back of a piece of scrap paper and drew this:

Usually I work up a drawing in stages, but for some reason this drawing went very smoothly (you can see I basically only used one coloured pencil) – partly because I was tracing the body poses. You can see some construction lines for mine and Ian’s heads and some erasing around the feet. I also tried to add a fig leaf to cover my modesty, but then I had the idea of using a Sneaky Dragon thought balloon. At first, I was thinking I would use a thought balloon  to cover both of us (that’s why I erased and redrew the bush that previously covered him), but I changed my mind when I did the final pencil drawing. You can also see where I tried adding the dragon’s tail, but didn’t think it worked there. I decided to add the tail in the final pencils.

The final pencils! You can see I changed the bush Ian’s holding so it covered him up and I added the dragon’s tail so it hangs more naturally. From here it was a simple matter of inking. I always draw my final pencils onto tracing paper for inking.

Here are the final inks. For some reason, this composition reminds me of a stained-glass window, which I find very appealing. Everything is ready for final colours and my modesty-saving thought balloon. I taped the pencilled image onto some bristol board and inked with a light table. As usual, I used Speedball Super Black ink and my Robert Simmons #2 sable brush. It’s not a well-known brush, but I love the short bristles and the control they give me. After this, I coloured the image in Photoshop. And that was that!

Well, that’s all the process for this week! I’ll post some new stuff soon!

Hello, Sneaky friends! This week on Sneaky Dragon THE GREAT DEBATE! Dave and Ian argue and argue about whether you are an artist. That’s right! YOU! Ian says yes; Dave says no. (Unless you’re an artist – then he says “yes) They also talk about McLean’s Magazine, McLean’s toothpaste and Colonel McLean Stevenson; Jerry Seinfeld’s very good web series Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee; the pretty good film Mike Birbiglia Sleepwalk With Me; Ian’s insomnia; and Dave’s exsomnia. Ian reveals that Dave’s a doctor of Dr. Suess, the Hate Crimes Jar makes an appearance, they wonder if you’re a redneck; and Dave insults everyone! EVERYONE!

Thanks for listening, folks!

Hello, y’all! (is an example of elision). Also, welcome to Sneaky Dragon! This week on on the show, Dave talks about his visit to the dentist; somehow talking about dentist offices leads to a discussion of Genesis (the Bible, not the band); Dave can’t resist singing the praises of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service again; Ian is a big fan of View To A Kill; Ian sets up Dave for an easy home run of a joke, but can Dave run with it? There was some other stuff too, but we can’t remember what and no one wrote it down – and Dave won’t listen to the show again. (We really need an intern.) Trust us, it was hilarious!

Also, Ian and Dave have a big announcement to make, as well.

Thanks for listening!

Happy New Year to all our favourite listeners! To all our unfavourite listeners: meh. This week on Sneaky Dragon, Ian and Dave are all alone after a month of guests. Dave comes out against swearing; Ian can’t resist giving A Christmas Carol one last kick before the season is over; Ian and Dave wonder if our parents really should understand us; Ian thinks that structured learning is a big, fat waste of time (Dave won’t go that far); finally, the last half-hour of the show is given over to a general arse-kicking of Judd Apatow’s not-very-good movie This Is 40. I think we can safely say that Dave and Ian aren’t fans.

Thanks for listening!

With Jason Dedrick. The Christmas season is a time for family so this week, David’s cousin, Jason Dedrick drops by Sneaky Dragon HQ. The conversation naturally centres around Christmas so Ian ruins It’s A Wonderful Life for everyone; then another holiday classic, A Christmas Carol, gets it too; Dave, Ian and Jason talk about their three favourite Christmas movies; Jason and David drag some skeletons out of the cupboard and discuss the Dedrick Family Christmas tradition, which is apparently their fathers talking in weird voices; they sing a song by David’s grandfather; talk about homicidal Little Rascals; then end the show by naming their top five films of 2012.

Disagree with their choices? Let us know your favourite films of 2012 in the comments section below or write to us on our Facebook page!

Next week, Ian’s mom comes on the show.

With Patrick Sauriol. On this week’s Sneaky Dragon, Patrick Sauriol of Corona Coming Attractions drops by to talk new movie releases for Christmas. Ian , Dave and Patrick get sidetracked into a long conversation about Peter Jackson’s new Hobbit film; they discuss how nerd culture is evolving with the new accessibility of pop culture; Ian and David get in an argument over whether knowledge and, for that matter, human beings are finite or infinite – Dave is finite and  Ian is infinite and also a believer in Transcendental Scientism (we’re not sure what else to call it); they also talk about Tom Cruise’s new film Jack Reacher, a film that Dave’s wife, as a fan of the books, must see, yet already hates; Patrick tells us some juicy Hollywood gossip; and things get a little goofy near the end – probably due to a little too much Christmas spirit.

Speaking of which, a Merry Christmas to all our friends and fans from Sneaky Dragon! Thanks for listening.

With Mark Meer. This week, actor, improviser and the voice of Mass Effect’s Captain Shepherd, Mark Meer joins Ian and David via Skype to talk movies, comics and video games. Mark talks about his upcoming sketch show Tiny Plastic Men, which is currently showing in Canada on Superchannel and he tells Ian and Dave about his career in sketch comedy and improv. They also talk a lot about The Walking Dead and zombies in general; superhero costumes;  Mark and Ian discuss their connection via CBC’s The Irrelevant Show; Mark mentions a famous person who began his career in the Edmonton improv scene, but doesn’t spill any juicy gossip (darn it all); and Dave makes fun of the multiple endings of Return of the King, then states that he will not be going to see The Hobbit when it opens as he is sickened by the insane decision to stretch the franchise out over three bloated movies.*

*which is a lie (he went that night with Ian to see it, the big liar)

Thanks for listening!

Oh dear friends of dragons who are sneaky, welcome to the first show of a brand-new year of Sneaky Dragon! There are some changes afoot as we start the new year: Ian has been fired and David has been replaced by a goat.

No, but seriously, Ian and Dave are fired. But they’ve been replaced by whole new Ian and Dave, who will be bringing a fresh new attitude to Sneaky Dragon! This week they talk about comics: can they ever be anything other than something Joss Whedon makes good movies from or in which handsome actors play unconvincing nerds? Is digital downloading a whole new ghetto? What they’re saying is: End comics apartheid! Also discussed: how are movies, books, plays and comics different from each other; why is On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (according to Dave) the best Bond film; what Dave does to save money; where Ian infected thousands of people; and for what reason Dave is not invited to funerals.

If you live in the Vancouver area, you can come see the trivially-challenged Ian and Dave in a hockey trivia challenge. This is a fund-raiser for Canucks Place Children’s Hospice, featuring the hockey film Goon and lots of local comics and celebrity guests. You can get tickets here and read more about it here.

Which James Bond film do you think is the best, dear listener? Ian and Dave would like to know!

Well, now Ian and I have recorded fifty episodes of Sneaky Dragon. That means I’ve drawn fifty different title cards for Sneaky Dragon. I’m not sure how it started, the idea that we should have a unique “title card” for each episode. I’m sure I was just copying what I’d seen other podcasts do – like The Ink Panthers. My original plan was to have something very simple that I could just copy off the Internet and use as a show image.

But that was not how it worked out as you’ll know if you’ve been following the show. Instead of images snatched off the Internet using good ol’ Google image search, I’ve tied myself to a desk every Saturday inserting a dragon drawing into iconic popular culture images – some of them pretty high concept and great deal of work!

Oh, that dragon! I originally thought he’d be a good idea: a simply drawn image that might have some marketing appeal – to fans of dragons. I never pictured myself drawing him every week!

The original dragon – a doodle I’d drawn in my Moleskine sketchbook – was the inspiration for the show title. It was a cute, little dragon peeping around another drawing on the page that inspired me to name him “Sneaky Dragon”.

Can you spot the original Sneaky Dragon on this page of doodles from my sketchbook? He’s pretty sneaky! (As always, click on any of the images to enlarge.)

I naively thought that original doodle would be fine for the logo design, but when I returned to the drawing I realized that what’s acceptable as a doodle in a sketchbook isn’t necessarily suitable for a finished piece. After several false starts, I drew the final dragon design on the corner of a scrap piece of paper at work one day. After a little clean up, that’s the image you can see on your iPod or in the header image on the website. (Actually, I originally drew him with arms and legs, but Ian felt it would be better with just the arms so the head could be seen more clearly, and he was right.)

Here is the original drawing of Sneaky Dragon with arms and legs:

Also there was more gore on the original Sneaky Dragon. I decided to tone down the maiden killing though.

Confession: That final drawing became my basic template for all the Sneaky Dragons I’ve drawn since. I have a couple of pieces of paper with his head at various sizes that I use to trace Sneaky Dragon onto most of the drawings I do. (If you look through the title cards, almost all of them have Sneaky Dragon drawn at the familiar three-quarter angle.)

Here’s a picture of those pieces of paper:

I tend to draw the dragon around the same size each time so there’s not a lot of variety in the sizes.

Here’s the very first title card:

So, the title cards started simply enough; the first show, which featured us talking about dragons, including Smaug, the dragon from The Hobbit, used the well-known book cover of the Hobbit with Smaug curled up on his pile of gold as the title card. I added the image of Sneaky Dragon peeking in from the corner of the picture later to make it fit in with the developing theme of the title cards.

My most embarrassing piece of art:

Like the first episode title card, the title card image for the second episode was related to topics discussed during the show. However, unlike the first title card, which used somebody else’s hard work, the title card for the second episode was a complete disaster. I learned that Photoshop isn’t magical and you can’t just throw a bunch of pictures together and it will somehow look cool. As you can see from this hodgepodge, the opposite is more likely to happen. An amateurishly cut-out image of a beaver in front of a Canadian flag? Terrible. I didn’t even use the correct font for the “Sneaky Dragon” balloon. Awful. Just an all-round failure.

The beginning of the end of my lazy scheme: the title card for the third show – the first time I’d drawn his body and not the first time I forgot that dragon’s have wings. This was a Christmas episode. I thought it would be fun to make a title card using a Coca-Cola image of Santa with Sneaky Dragon sitting in his lap. Of course, that involved drawing a whole new Sneaky Dragon. Something I was still getting used to. As you can see, three shows in and the idea of a simple image copied off the internet was already beginning to slip away from me.

Here is the original line art for the Christmas title card:

The title card for Episode 4:

I still hadn’t figured out the formula I would slavishly follow for the next 47 episodes so the title card for Episode 4 did not feature a picture of Sneaky Dragon. Instead I scanned the cover of the Frank R. Stockton collection The Lady and the Tiger and added a drawing of a shocked Tony the Tiger (this was related to the show, believe it or not).

Here’s the line art of Tony the Tiger. I ended up re-drawing his mouth and photoshopping it in because I didn’t think my original mouth made him look surprised and worried enough.

Still, once again, not exactly taking the easy route and just copying and pasting a picture of the book cover I found in Google images.

The title card for Episode 5 and the re-appearance of the dragon – where he would faithfully remain for the next 45 title cards:

Here is the line art for the Sneaky Dragon as zombie:

As you can see, Episode 5 was where I really locked into the formula: Ian and I had talked about zombies on this episode so I thought it would be funny to insert Sneaky Dragon into a photo from The Night of the Living Dead. It also tickled my fancy to have one of the zombies saying, “Sneaky Dragon!” It was at this point that I gave up on the original title cards idea and began the complicated process of the Sneaky Dragon title card – which, when you think about it, is basically creating a magazine cover illustration once a week in one and half days for about a year now. I live in fear that I will completely run out of good ideas!

One of the things I’ve learned, and probably one of the hardest for me as a perfectionist, is working with a deadline. That’s right, I’m a perfectionist – and I don’t mean that in a good way, as perfectionism is one of the most creatively destructive habits we can learn as young artists. Perfectionism leads to procrastination and depression due to hyper self-criticism and unrealistic goal setting. I’m often paralyzed into inactivity by difficult or demanding tasks that tax my abilities. You can’t be judged as a failure if you never finish, I reason.

Well, you can throw all that bullshit into a cocked hat when it comes to Sneaky Dragon. We generally record the show on a Thursday evening and the episode drops on Saturday (or Sunday morning, but as long as I haven’t gone to bed I figure I’m within the deadline). That means I have to edit the show, write the show description, upload it to the site and finish the title card on Friday evening and Saturday (fingers crossed). It really doesn’t give me too much time for hand-wringing and getting all precious.

There have been a couple of times where I’ve had to let a drawing go, admit defeat and post it anyway. Sometimes the drawing just can’t do justice to your vision, sometimes it was a bad idea in the first place and nothing was going to help it, sometimes you’re just a picky lunatic who is pleased by nothing. In the past, those things would have caused the project to come to a screeching halt. The drawings would sit on my drawing board for a couple of years while I procrastinated by doing more “important” things like folding laundry and washing dishes.

(Doing dishes and folding laundry are important chores, but you shouldn’t rather be doing them than drawing, right?)

I don’t have those luxuries with Sneaky Dragon. Every episode has to have a unique title card when it comes out and that’s all there is to it. To be honest, looking through the title cards for this post, I had a hard time finding title cards I didn’t like. They all looked pretty good to me! Here are some of the weaker ones I’ve done (in my opinion – and I don’t think they’re bad, just not successful):

Sneaky Pals – Episode 10

I’m a terrible caricaturist since I basically draw everyone looking the same and, if there was ever any doubt, this drawing  proved it. Also, I had an awful time with the colour because I hadn’t learned to reduce my huge files down to something manageable so I could create nice, compact PNG files. (I usually make my drawings 1200 pixels now unless I’m using less high quality images I’ve copied off the internet)

Episode 22

There are a couple of funny things here, but my slavish copying of the Hulk resulted in lousy drawing of Sneaky Dragon. There wasn’t a lot of room for a real drawing of him so I forgive myself.

Episode 32

Unfortunately I didn’t do a very good drawing of Sneaky Dragon here. He’s supposed to look like he’s blowing past the Addam’s Family window, but instead he looks like…I don’t know what he looks like, but he doesn’t look like he’s blowing past anyway. Too bad because it was a good idea.

Episode 39

Obviously a drawing based on the cast picture for Moonrise Kingdom, which I tried to draw in Eric Anderson’s style – a style that is difficult to mimic. I wish now that I had taken the time to colour the picture with pencil crayons, but time constraints meant I coloured it in fake watercolours on Photoshop and it’s a bit of a mess, quite frankly.

Episode 46

Once again, a good idea spoiled by sloppy execution. I should have coloured the top part of the picture red. That would have made all the difference. As it is, there is too much of the one colour. Also, I wish I’d done a bit more work on the background.

Still, out of fifty title cards, there are only six duds. That’s a pretty good hitting percentage.

Working with such tight deadlines has made me change my work habits too. I still find it irresistible to check Facebook when I first turn on the computer, but I limit what I do, and I don’t open other tabs and start a surfing party. I really have to be mean to myself and push my own nose to the grindstone.

I’ve also learned some tricks to speed up my art process. One of which I’ve already mentioned: drawing Sneaky Dragon from the same angle as often as possible so I can quickly trace his head. I also quickly learned to use tracing paper to work up a drawing to a final image. Sometimes the drawing is done with several images on different pieces of tracing paper combined to make one single image. Along with that, I’ve also started to use different colour pencils (Prismacolor Col-Erase pencils) to quickly sketch out an image and build it up using progressively darker and darker colours; then tracing and cleaning up that drawing for the final image from which I’ll ink. Here are a few photos of some of the work roughs before they’ve been cleaned up and inked:

Here’s a rough of Ian for the Episode 31 title card, in which we were chained to the word TOPIC. This was for the episode where we challenged ourselves to stick to one topic for the whole show. The topic was picked at random from listeners’ suggestions.

Here is the rough of me. I’ve pretty much accepted that I can’t draw caricatures so I just draw us in a vague, representational way that suggests us.

I wish I could have found the earlier roughs of us. They’re somewhere in the big pile of tracing paper and bristol board that makes up the Sneaky Dragon art “archives”. To save time, I drew a rough drawing and then traced both drawings from that, making some changes to differentiate us.

Here is the giant word TOPIC to which we would soon be chained:

It was much easier to do the lettering without the clutter of Ian and I in front of everything.

Here is the final composite pencil drawing, ready to be taped to the bristol board for inking:

The chains were definitely drawn on a separate piece of tracing paper and then “finished” on this drawing. You can also see that Sneaky Dragon has been added (traced from one of those head drawings, no doubt).

Here’s the final art:

I always wanted to contribute a title card to The Ink Panthers podcast, but was too shy to bother them. So when Ian was lucky enough to be a guest on the show, I jumped at the chance to draw Inky the Panther and Sneaky Dragon together.

I usually start a drawing of Sneaky Dragon with the body and add the head once I’m happy with where I’m going:

This is a very rough outline where I’m attempting to get body to look right. There is no “model sheet” for Sneaky Dragon and I tend to draw him differently depending on the situation- fat or thin, winged or no wings. I just draw until everything looks “right”.

I have a large roll of paper that my sister-in-law gave me from the printing company she worked for. I like to cut off a big piece and work up the drawings on it. Here is the rough of Inky from the same piece as the rough of Sneaky:

Yep, kids, artists really do use circles and lines like in those stupid “How to Draw a…” instruction guides.

This is someone else’s parody of them:

(Which pretty much sums up how they feel when you’re a kid.) You can also see the “URP” sound effect being formed on that paper as well. (I like to economize!)

Next, out comes the tracing paper. Here is final rough of Sneaky (sans head), the finished rough for Inky and the final rough of the URP word balloon.

Here is the composite pencils of everything put together on the paper, ready for inking:

As you can see, I traced this onto the same scrap piece of paper I started with (there’s the original rough drawing of Sneaky’s foot on the right). I added Sneaky’s head, tilted Inky’s head and added some blood.

Here’s the final art:

(Sorry if this is too much! I find these sorts of posts fascinating and wish other artists would post about their processes more so I can’t resist adding more detail. This is the last one!)

Here are some of the roughs for my most recent title card for our listeners’ questions show. Since one of the questions related to Robin (of Batman and Robin), I decided it would be amusing to have Sneaky Dragon dressed as the Riddler and Ian and I dressed as two different Robins. I got to be the Dick Grayson Robin and Ian got to be the more recent Damian Wayne Robin (because his costume is cool).

As usual, I start with a generic body that I can alter to “look” like Ian and me:

Pretty terrible, right? If you judged all your art based on what you start with you’d throw down your pencil and quit! You’ll notice I left off the hardest part: the hands!

Here’s another rough as I try to figure out Sneaky Dragon from behind and estimate where Ian and I will be standing:

Still at a rough stage, but I’ve traced the original rough and refined it a little bit. After a while, all the erasing and re-drawing becomes a drag so it’s refreshing to start over on a nice, clean sheet of paper. And then mess that up:

You can see a lot of erasing on this page too and some abortive attempts to draw the hands. I don’t know why hands are so hard to draw. I mean more than being anatomically correct, but also expressive and naturalistic.

Here’s another rough. This time of myself, but I think I was having some trouble with it so I gave up.

Here is the final pencils for me:

Look at all the erasing and re-drawing! Yeesh. I obviously struggled with these drawings.

Here is the final rough for Ian:

For some reason, Ian’s drawing went a lot smoother than mine – and I did his first.

Here is the final rough for Sneaky Dragon:

This pose makes the most sense, but now I wish I’d drawn him also looking out towards the viewer at the normal 3/4 view so we could see the front of his Riddler costume and his mask better. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20, as they say!

Finally, here are the finished pencils – basically ready for inking.

Well, it was a long way to go for a drawing that I thought was basically so-so. I kind of blew it with the inks, but that’s the way it goes. You win some, you lose some.

Here’s the final art:

Speaking of winning some, let’s end with my ten favourite title cards in no particular order:

1) First up, the title card for Episode 9, which was a take off on Winnie the Pooh stuck in Rabbit’s door. It’s so much fun to draw the Disney characters because they are so perfectly realized and the crabby looking Sneaky Dragon is pretty good too. It’s also the first time I attempted to do fake watercolours with Photoshop (on the background). Plus it’s a pretty good gag.

2) Episode 12. This one is a big favourite with Ian too. The first really ambitious title card I did. I decided to re-draw the whole cover, ink it and colouor it in Photoshop. I had no idea how long it would take and actually spent the most of the day working on it, then spent the whole night working on it and stayed up until six in the morning. It was crazy!

3) Episode 18, which featured our friend Branwyn Bigglestone. She has quite a few tattoos so as a joke I designed this impossibly silly tattoo for her. I don’t think anyone actually believed it was real, but I did get quite a few questions asking how I did it (in Photoshop with the warp tool, then I lowered the opacity a bit so my skin would show through and added some shiny highlights). The best part is the picture makes me look skinny and my arm big. Vanity!

4) Episode 15 with Y The Last Man artist Pia Guerra (and Ian’s wife) was the first episode where I could use a guest’s work  as a jumping off point for the title card. In this case, I took a pencil sketch that was in the back of one of the Y collections and added a triumphant dragon to the pile of dead men. It was quite simple, but I do like my changing the The Last Man to The Last Dragon using the same font and I also altered two of the foreground figures to look more like Ian and me – we’re even wearing Sneaky Dragon shirts.

5) Episode 19 had Richard Starkings as a guest. Another opportunity to have some fun! I really enjoy the amount of detail in this title card: Sneaky Dragon with all his futuristic gear; Elephantdragon in a rough approximation of the original font; the issue number becoming the episode number; the names of the interviewers in place of the artists; and the little Approved by the Sneaky Dragon Authority logo. Like I said: Fun!

6) Episode 26 is another title card whose sheer detail even amazes me! A reference to a riff on the show involving Macdonald’s and the plays of Shakespeare, this one must have taken me an amazing amount of time. I had to find images of the MacDonaldLand characters that I could use for reference, draw those characters and then redraw them with “Shakespeare-ian” clothing on – except Sneaky Dragon who took the role of Ronald MacDonald. My favourite is the “Small Side of  Fry Guys of Treachery”, which is a reference to Act 4, Scene 2 of Macbeth where the First Murderer says “What! You egg!” and then stabs MacDuff’s son while decrying “Young fry of treachery!” For some reason, that scene has always amused me. If you go to the Episode 26 page on the website, you’ll find a gallery of all the characters there.

7) Episode 27 makes the grade for me because it was a fun idea that I executed pretty well. Sneaky Dragon’s pose is fairly convincing since I found a picture of a girl in mid-flying kick on the internet and based the drawing around that. I also like the font, which has a funky Seventies feel. This drawing became one of our proposed T-shirt designs.

8) The title card for Episode 29 also became a possible design for a T-shirt: Sneaky Dragon in a parody of the iconic Alien image from the third movie. It was fun to work up that drawing. It was also fun to try to approximate the look of the lettering from the original poster. As much as I can, I always try to make my parodies as close as possible to the original. I really love the small D taking the place of the 3 on the poster. I’m just sorry that in my quest for authenticity I couldn’t use the phrase “In space no one can hear you sneak”, which was a paraphrase from the first film.

9) Episode 31. Our “no tangents” show. Ian and I had to stick to one subject for the whole show and it was really hard! This title card was my allegorical representation of that experience, showing Ian and I chained to the giant word TOPIC. This was the first time that I’d tackled drawing us since episode 10 and I was much happier with the results even though these drawings look nothing like us. Lately, I’ve drawn us  into a couple of title cards and I always base my portraits on this drawing. This title card was strangely popular with people as well.

10) Another labour intensive title card as I decided to re-draw Episode 40 guest Ty Templeton’s comic Stig’s Inferno with Sneaky Dragon interviewing Ty’s character Stig, who doesn’t look very happy about it. It was a lot of fun to mimic Ty’s style and I had a riot inking it in my best Templeton. The colouring is also pretty good and I think the whole thing took me quite a while to get done.

Bonus 11) I couldn’t resist adding this bit of fun. I think this drawing is amazingly witty (if I must say so myself!) (and I must!) with Pinocchio and his friend turning into Sneaky Dragons instead of donkeys. I don’t know which is worse! As usual, it’s so much fun to ink and draw in the Disney-style.

I’m sure I could have picked another nine and made it a Top 20, but even creeping past ten to eleven felt like cheating. The crazy part is a lot of the title cards I’ve chosen will most likely be supplanted by the title cards I’ve yet to produce for the next fifty shows. As I mentioned above, the last few title cards (for Episodes 50, 51 and 52) have all featured Ian and I in various humiliating ways (and one of those cards would definitely knock one of the ten cards I’ve chosen off the list). That may be next phase as we continue on with the show. Or I could go back to doing my usual pop culture pastiches quite easily. It will be interesting to see where the next fifty title cards take us. Whatever the case, I don’t think I’ll run out of ideas!

It’s Episode 52, the first anniversary of Sneaky Dragon! Despite some delays due to illness, Ian and Dave celebrate a year of Sneaky Dragon with their bunniest show ever. Dave recalls the day he decided to stop being an irritating contrarian, and then proves his case by defending Rex Reed’s infamous review of Cabin In the Woods, saying he doesn’t think the Austin Powers movies are very funny and then making an argument for spanking children. Ian holds his face in shock! They also discuss the Fifties; good and bad parenting; changing behaviour through positive affirmation; and get nostalgic over the Six Million Dollar Man and one of the greatest TV shows of all time, Emergency! They also come out against soggy bread.

Thanks for listening!

Dave has drawn a lot of Sneaky Dragon title cards, folks (he’s also photo-montaged a few too, but that’s a different matter and our lawyers are taking care of it). We thought it was high time that Dave’s drawings have a special place on the website (and not just in our hearts *tear!*)

Every title card Dave draws somehow relates to the each episode. It’s up to you to figure out what Dave is referencing!

Please click on any on any image to enlarge and then you can click through the gallery. (Click on an image to close.)

Sneaky Dragon marches on! Ian is back from his trip to England and talks about his stay in the shoutiest, drinkiest city in England, describes some “only-in-England” TV shows he saw, and tells us about his severe and aesthetically unpleasant bout of food poisoning.  Ian and Dave also talk about the newest James Bond flick, Skyfall; discuss the differences between American, British and Canadian comedy; admit they hate everything that women love; and, as usual, Dave hates everything that everyone else thinks is great. Also, The Heart of Juliet Jones and Charles Laughton. (You’ll have to listen to the show to understand.)

OMG!!! And LOLZ, peoples, LOLZ!!! We’re fifty episodes old and old enough to know better! Happy birthday!! I mean, happy anniversary! (Throws confetti in the air and kills birds)

Actually, episode 52 is our real anniversary, but everyone gets excited when you hit magical numbers that are divisible by five so we decided to celebrate our fiftieth show by having an all questions episode in which Ian and Dave answered listeners’ questions. We had a lot of questions from a couple of listeners and Ian and Dave tackled them all – even the difficult no pants question.

Learn Dave’s favourite Beatles song; Ian’s comedic inspirations; how the show is produced; the origins of the show; why Dave is a teetotalling prig; their literary influences; their favourite comic books; how Dave got cancer – and survived (so far); the secret of Sneaky Dragon; and whether Ty Templeton will ever be a back as a guest.

We know it’s long, but, come on, it’s the fiftieth episode! Deal with it.

With David Fine. This week David and Ian are joined on Sneaky Dragon by David Fine, award winning animator and co-creator of Bob and Margaret. Ian, David and David decide that there are too many Daves and adopt new, popular nicknames; Ian complains about the European variants of his name; Dave points out that his name is boring; one Dave has musical children, the other one doesn’t; Ian is exposed as a scamster and admits to consorting with scrap metal thieves; Dave tells about his experiences at the Oscar ceremonies; also, discussed: are penises phallic symbols?

Dave’s daughter Myllis’s name blog, which was mentioned during the show, can be found at havendenesdailynames.

Dave’s daughter’s band can be found at Days on Mars.

Thanks for listening!

If you think you have a great question for Ian and Dave to answer, but have just been plain putting it off, get them in now. The cut off is this Wednesday, November 7.

So get those questions you’ve been dying to ask in and make a show that’s sure to be fun even better.

Yes, it’s another episode of Sneaky Dragon – number 48, to be exact. This week Dave and Ian excitedly announce that their show is available on Stitcher, a downloadable app that allows you to listen to your favorite shows directly from your smartphone and is even built-in to some car dashboards. What a world! Ian figures this will be their worst show yet; then he boggles Dave’s mind with his impossibly young childhood memories; Dave explains how parents memories work; Ian squirms uncomfortably to the dulcet tones of TV news banter; he tells Dave something that Dave already knows; Dave tells about his upcoming weekend getaway with the wife; they talk Halloween, haunted houses and dancing vegetables; and they take a look at listener Marcus Harwell’s Top Ten list of movies.

Also, listener Nick Vuono’s theme makes a surprise reappearance.

Don’t forget! Only one more show till the listener’s questions show. Get your questions in to Ian and Dave and they will answer them on Episode 50.

Hello, Sneaky friends! This week Ian and Dave were pleased as punch when listener Nick Vuono sent in a new theme for Sneaky Dragon. Listen with surprise and awe – just like Ian and Dave did.

Also this week: Dave admits to a sad lack of trout-related knowledge; Ian maintains that card games are for old ladies – especially the card game, Old Maid; they wonder how so-so looking Phil Collins took over Genesis and Bob Hoskins’ acting career (almost); Ian’s troubles with former girlfriends are discussed in uncomfortable detail (although it’s Dave who brings the details, admittedly); finally, they read through listener Tom Callaway’s Top Ten list of movies and his controversial Top Five overrated films. Both Ian and Dave are outraged!

Episode 5o will be a listener’s questions show. Don’t forget to write Ian and Dave a question you would like answered! You can contact them via email, here in the comments section on the website or on their Sneaky Dragon Facebook page.

Thanks for listening!

Hello, all you Sneaky Dragon fans out there! This week David said “good-bye and good riddance” to a fellow podcasting duo and rival show (one down, four thousand, two hundred and six to go); Ian visited David’s stomping grounds and declared his area of residence “sinister”; Dave told a story about “doing a donkey”; it turns out Safeway has poor hiring practices; Ian revealed Dave’s past nicknames; Dave declared a particular means of conveyance “ridiculous”; and for a guy who loves old movies and radio shows, Dave sure has a strange fear. They also discussed one of their listeners Top ten list of movies and Ian told a story that made them look like idiots (as usual).

Don’t forget! An episode of listener’s questions is coming up so get your questions in toot sweet! Be they personal, mechanical or geometrical.

Thanks for listening!

Hello, friends of sneakiness! Here is the latest and the greatest! The best podcast currently on the internet waves! Listen to any other podcast and compare it to ours and I’m sure you’ll agree all the other podcasts are a pile of poo! Phew. We’re trying to learn to toot our own horn here at Sneaky Dragon HQ. It doesn’t come naturally to us Canadians!

Or at least that’s what David and Ian maintain on the show this week. They also talk about robot companions; accept that they’re old men and talk about radio shows (and by that, I mean Ian brings up Fred Allen again); realize that people on podcasts are invisible; and figure out a clever way to tell if someone is fit. Dave talks about “knocking” songs, reveals his lack of bank knowledge, makes a n intolerant plea for tolerance, shows off his fresh arm gash, then waits for tetanus to set in. Ian tells us that a video he made is going to be on Tosh.O, compares and contrasts Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell, shows off his singing and rapping abilities to no applause, then tears the newest Sherlock Holmes fanfic, Elementary, a new bumhole.

Don’t forget, Sneaky friends, that we will be doing a listener’s questions show in the near future. Please send in a question or two that you would like answered. They can be personal questions or specific questions about any of the myriad topics Ian and Dave love to blather about.

Thanks for listening!

Happy Thanksgiving, Sneaky Dragonettes! Well, it’s Thanksgiving in Canada where we don’t like to withhold our thanks until November due to our fear of God’s reprisals! This week Ian and Dave also celebrate the upcoming release of Dave Sim’s Cerebus: High Society Digital Audio Edition on October 10 by talking about their appearance with Dave Sim as part of the Spirits of Independence tour in 1995. They have photographic evidence! They also talk about Dave Sim himself and try to sum up Cerebus; discuss being friends with people with outrageous opinions; reminisce about party crashing at the first APE show; and Dave gets his comeuppance (because karma is a bitch, dude).

Here is a picture of Ian and Dave with Paul Sloboda at the Cerebus Spirits of Independents Seattle stop in 1995. (Only Paul seemed aware that he was having his picture taken.):

Here’s another picture from the same show. This time with Ian’s future collaborator on Futurama (woah!) comics, James Lloyd (on right) and unknown fellow in hat:

(Even knowing that my picture was being taken didn’t help me.)

And finally, from a different small press show, Ian and Dave as a couple of young pups (with Susan Ferguson):

We hope you enjoyed this little stroll down memory lane. Next week, back to the future!

Hello, my little sneaklings, and welcome to Episode 43 of the podcast that appreciates you for who you really are – deep down inside.

This week, Ian and Dave talk about moms and dads and parenthood – as it turns out, they’re all for it! They also discuss Vancouver’s newest bridge, which as yet has no name (please start a write in campaign for the Sneaky Dragon Crossing); Ian convinces Dave that he is a born performer; Dave confesses his lack of musical aptitude and Ian tells him it’s all in the counting; Dave shows off his fish tags and talks about his summer working on a salmon boat. It’s what they call a fish tale! Haw!

Thanks for listening!

Welcome back, fellow sneaklings! This week on Sneaky Dragon things go a little sideways when the secret word is p—s and we mean P—S! Dave insists the word “stormcock” exists; he bemoans our “tee-hee” culture and then talks about p—s names; he and Ian talk about the text section of old comic books and Dave sings the praises of the Little Lulu’s diaries in the original comics; Ian tells Dave about the cutbacks happening in Archie; he calls Uncle Scrooge an asshole, Archie a hound and thinks Richie Rich was a d–k for not giving away his imaginary billions; Dave doesn’t think girls should play football; they talk about Nancy and Fritzi Ritz, and then Dave goes TOO FAR; they discuss what is the best North American comic book for kids (no Lucky Luke, Dave!); they talk about Luann and then Dave gets bored and ends the show with two stories definitely involving the p—s! Let’s just call the episode Male Anatomy of a Murder and get it over with.

No news is good news, they say. But what if the news is good? Does that make it bad just because it’s news? It seems a little unfair to the news. Speaking of news, what’s new (geddit?) at Sneaky Dragon this week? Video links! That’s what’s new. Ian and I had lots to talk about this week – especially when we went toe to toe, mano a mano and discussed our top 5 most overrated films.

But before we got to that, we opened the show by talking about things that make us cry. As it turns out, Ian and I are a couple of big babies, but Ian is the biggest. He even cries about monkeys. Everyone knows you laugh at monkeys. Because they smoke cigars.

Here is a little slideshow to really make you sad:

Sniff, sniff. *tear*

(Ian’s former bosses!)

Alton Brown shows us how to stop the tears:

Let’s give the last word to Chrissie Hynde. She likes that.

We talked about the great writer/director Alexander Payne:

Who, as you know, directed The Departed:

Great film! But we actually meant The Descendants (*blush*)

I haven’t seen this film yet so I couldn’t watch the trailer. Was it good???

Please don’t confuse Alexander Payne with Major Payne.

Or with Max Payne, for that matter.

Ugh! Please don’t mistake that for a movie!

During the show, Ian revealed the secret of the Harlem Globetrotters:

(The secret is: they were once badly animated!) Wait a minute, what was that song at the beginning? I thought their theme tune was Sweet Georgia Brown?

Things went a little downhill for the Harlem Globetrotters as the Seventies wore on…

Judging from this, everything went downhill as the Seventies wore on!

After the preliminaries, Ian and I got down to brass tacks and started to talk about our choices for Top 5 Most Overrated Movies.

Ian thinks this movie has a bad message for kids and thinks it’s a little too German – although the source material is Italian!

In my experience, lots of people insist on making jackasses of themselves, but that scene is pretty damn terrifying.

Ian thought that Superman: The Movie was silly and didn’t particularly care for any of it. He does like the actor Ned Beatty though:

Ian does not like the prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Temple of Doom. He thinks it’s too violent and was politically incorrect before the invention of the term.

It is odd to have a call back to a scene that hasn’t happened yet. It kind of spoils the goofy fun of him shooting the swordsman in Raiders if he’d tried it and failed before. Still, I enjoyed this movie as silly fun, which is what it was intended to be.

I am not a fan of Anchorman. I’m afraid I’m not a fan of humour that is a celebration of dumbness. I did enjoy this scene though:

Mostly because it has Luke Wilson. My man crush on Luke Wilson goes way back.

I wasn’t a big fan of The Blair Witch Project either. I found the way it was filmed killed any suspense the film tried to build. The climactic ending sequence went by so quickly I was actually relieved. Still, I think we all agree that the film should have had some kind of ending.

Blade Runner is based on one of my favourite author’s books, the oddly-titled Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. It’s too bad the stupid film turned the whole book upside-down. Making Dick’s sun-scorched, dying, empty world into an over-populated nightime world of garish neon and sci-noir. Ian says my hating the movie, but loving the book makes me a replicant. I say it makes me an over-emotional nerd.

Poor robot.

Here’s the real shit:

Ugh! Audiobooks are BORING!

Of course, Ian prefers the video game.

Which was based on the audiobook.

And finally, please don’t confuse Alexander Payne with Liam Payne!

There you go, Directioners! Cry me a river! Good bye, everyone. See you next time!

Hello fans of sneaky dragons! Now that we’ve lured you here, listen to our show! This week Ian and Dave usher in a new era of speed podcasting – let’s call it Speedcasting – but prove they’re a couple of hypocrites by having their longest show EVER! (Possibly.) Also discussed: things that make us cry; what exactly is The Departed; are the Harlem Globetrotters still necessary; and Dave talk blocks Ian. Also, Ian and Dave discuss their top five overrated films!

Ian’s films:

1. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
2. Superman
3. Titanic
4. Terminator 3
5. Pinocchio

Dave’s films:

1. Blade Runner
2. Se7en
3. The Blair Witch Project
4. The Darjeeling Limited
5. Anchorman

Disagree with us? Want to kill Dave dead for not liking Anchorman? Think “My Heart Will Go On” is an awesome song? LET US KNOW! Comments are welcome.

Also, don’t forget that we will be having a listener’s questions show very soon. Get your questions in and save us a lot of work. Thanks!